Rick Mercer Calls for More Gay Role Models, Is Awesome

Carolyn’s Team Pick:

Earlier this week, Rick Mercer (Canada’s answer to Stephen Colbert, but also gay) called for better adult role models for gay teens, following the suicide of 15-year-old Jamie Hubley, a gay teenager from Ottawa. He says:

“It’s no longer good enough for us to tell kids who are different that it’s going to get better. We have to make it better now. So If you’re gay and you’re in public life, I’m sorry, you don’t have to run around with a Pride flag and bore the hell out of everyone, but you can’t be invisible. Not anymore.”

Basically, you need to watch this video:

BAM.

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Ryan Yates

Ryan Yates was the NSFW Editor (2013–2018) and Literary Editor for Autostraddle.com, with bylines in Nylon, Refinery29, The Toast, Bitch, The Daily Beast, Jezebel, and elsewhere. They live in Los Angeles and also on twitter and instagram.

Ryan has written 1142 articles for us.

14 Comments

    • I know!

      I find it interesting, though, that after each one it seems he is invited to go on various news/radio shows and ‘come out’ again (like in his interview with the current earlier this week).

    • Rick made 22 Minutes in ’93, and Stephen didn’t show up on TV until ’96.
      And The Rant has been one of my favorite things forever.

    • Just what I wanted to say. Rick Mercer was on my radar for at least a decade before I first heard of Colbert

    • Hey, now. If anything, Colbert is the States’ distant echo to Rick Mercer.

      This rant has been spinning great nationwide discussion.

      I was impressed by Thursday’s in-depth interview with Mercer on The Current on CBC Radio 1 (similar to NPR, for you Stateside folk), and also the half hour that Ontario Today spent on Friday opening a discussion on Mercer’s call for public figures to out themselves. The boomer generation makes up a huge chunk of CBC Radio’s audience, and the station does a great job of keeping content just edgy enough to be inclusive of the echos without alienating the boomers. A lot of closed-minded, small-town folk listen to CBC–but thanks to programs like Q, hosted by Jian Ghomeshi; and Definitely Not the Opera, hosted by Sook-Yin Lee (which has featured Effing Dykes, btw, and Sook-Yin is queer), I feel like a nationwide cultural shift is palpably in the making.

  7. EVERYONE, regardless of sexual orientation and level of celebrity, needs to do everything in their power to make it better!

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